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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27162379">Roll for Initiative</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bustle/pseuds/Bustle'>Bustle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Chrobin Week 2020 [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Characters Play Dungeons &amp; Dragons, Chrobin Week 2020, Dungeons &amp; Dragons References, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:15:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,138</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27162379</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bustle/pseuds/Bustle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Chrom isn’t sure how his sister always manages to rope him into these things. One minute she’s lamenting how her friend Robin doesn’t have enough people to run a game, and the next thing he knows he’s been press-ganged into filling out a group of Lissa’s friends.</p><p>Modern AU with Dungeons &amp; Dragons, written for Chrobin Week 2020, Day 5 - Fallen &amp; Risen.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chrom &amp; Liz | Lissa, Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Chrobin Week 2020 [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978207</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Roll for Initiative</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chrom isn’t sure how his sister always manages to rope him into these things. One minute she’s lamenting how her friend Robin doesn’t have enough people to run a game, and the next thing he knows he’s been press-ganged into filling out a group of Lissa’s friends.</p><p>Not wanting to let anyone down, even if he’s not sure when he agreed to show up in the first place, Chrom finds himself waiting outside of his sister’s dorm so that he can drive them both over to Robin's house.</p><p>As usual, Lissa is running fifteen minutes late, and she ignores all of his texts. She comes barreling up to the car, laden with snacks and a binder covered in stickers, and dumps her stuff on the seat without so much as a greeting. When she notices the bottle of wine he brought, she laughs.</p><p>“Geez, Chrom, it’s Dungeons and Dragons, you’re not going to meet someone’s <i>mother,”</i> she says, flicking the bottle before she buckles herself in.</p><p>“Well, I—I’m trying to be polite!” he cries, defensively. He’s pretty sure that bringing something to a person’s house when visiting for the first time is considered a polite thing to do, and he’d agonized over what to get before picking up the wine as a last-minute choice. The wine itself was selected because the label looked nice. “You know, being a good houseguest, or...I don’t know!”</p><p>Lissa just laughs at him again.</p><p>“Okay, Miss Manners. Start driving, we’re late.”</p><p>Chrom lets out a frustrated groan and does as he’s told, his ears burning with embarrassment.</p><p>Robin’s place turns out to be a cramped apartment overflowing with oddities—piles of books, tchotchkes, and a few sadly withered plants, stuffed into narrow hallways and awkwardly arranged rooms. Chrom has to duck his head to fit through the door frames. </p><p>“Oh, erm...thank you,” Robin says as she greets them, accepting the wine with a bemused smile. “Uh, just make yourselves comfortable, and we’ll get started once Vaike shows up.”</p><p>Chrom makes some kind of an agreeable noise and wishes intensely that he had hesitated more about bringing the wine in, but he hadn’t wanted to let his sister know she’d gotten to him.</p><p>Lissa squeezes past and drags him into a room that has a dining table and a mismatched assortment of chairs, plopping herself down and directing Chrom to the seat next to her. In short order he is introduced to the rest of their group—Robin’s roommate Miriel, a man named Gaius who lazily salutes when indicated, and Sumia, who he already knows in passing. Sumia waves at him enthusiastically, trailing her elbow through some onion dip set out for a bowl of chips.</p><p>“Is this your first time playing, Chrom? Oh, that’s so exciting!” she exclaims. “First sessions are so fun! Don’t be afraid to ask us if you have questions, okay?”</p><p>“Yep!” Robin says from the doorway, slipping past Chrom’s chair to dump a bunch of books, folders, and a bag of dice in front of the chair at the head of the table. Obviously feeling his rising confusion about what he’s gotten himself into, she turns a sympathetic smile on him. </p><p>“Normally I like to work with new players to help them make a character beforehand, but this was thrown together last-minute...We really wanted to try something with this new campaign for a fun Halloween get-together,” she says, stroking the glossy cover of one of her books, entitled <i>DND FALLEN and RISEN.</i> It depicts what looks like a bunch of zombies, led by a hooded figure with red eyes.</p><p>“Sorry for throwing you in the deep end like this. Lissa said she made a character sheet for you, so we can go over that for now.”</p><p>“I sure did!” Lissa says proudly. She stops arranging her snack hoard to produce Chrom’s character sheet with a flourish, slapping it on the table in front of him. </p><p>Chrom glances at the sheet, and groans when he notices the name. <i>Krumb.</i></p><p>“Really, Lissa?” he says, frowning. It feels so...cheesy. And it rhymes with ‘dumb’, which Lissa is no doubt planning on capitalizing on sooner or later. Gaius leans over the table to peer at the sheet upside-down and snorts, though he tries to turn it into a cough. Even Sumia’s lips are twitching as she tries to repress a laugh. </p><p>“I think it’s...nice,” Sumia declares, kind as ever. She cranes her head to read the rest of the details, muttering them out-loud to herself. “Krumb is a blue dragon-born paladin, neutral-good, backstory—oh!”</p><p>Under backstory and personality, Lissa has elected to simply put ‘Boring.’</p><p>Lissa grins, unrepentant. </p><p>“It’ll suit him perfectly, he’ll barely have to roleplay at all!” she exclaims. Chrom elbows her in the ribs. Lissa blows a raspberry at him and digs her heel down on his foot in response.</p><p>Chrom is starting to feel distinctly harassed, especially considering he’s doing this as a favor. Before they can break into full squabbling, however, Robin intervenes.</p><p>“Okay, I’m just going to explain some of these numbers and things to you. And the background can be a blessing in disguise, because that means Lissa left it open for you to fill in the way you want,” she says, clearly trying to move them along and keep the peace. </p><p>The siblings make faces at each other, but Chrom turns his attention to Robin. She sits down and draws her chair closer, their knees bumping with the proximity. </p><p>He’s certain the explanation he gets is a succinct, simple explanation of what the stats mean, but he doesn’t catch much of it. Robin is sitting very close, and he’s suddenly struck by the fact that she has long eyelashes and lips that look extremely <i>soft,</i> and so it’s difficult to pay attention to the basic run-down of how die rolls interact with modifiers to determine if something he tries to do is a success or a failure.</p><p>“It’s easier to remember once you get some practice,” she says. This close, he catches a faint scent of the shampoo she uses when she flips her pigtails over her shoulder. He focuses all his energy on not to blurting out something creepy and stupid like ‘You smell good.’</p><p>The twinkle in her eye suggests she’s aware that he retained very little of her explanation, but she doesn’t seem to mind too much. Their knees are still knocking together, and he can feel her warmth through his pant leg. </p><p>“Ready to get started?” she asks.</p><p>“Ah...yeah.” Chrom clears his throat. “Yes.”</p><p>Regrettably, this makes Robin scoot her chair away, back to the head of the table.</p><p>“The absentminded oaf is still absent,” Miriel says.</p><p>“He’s always late,” Gaius says, shrugging. “I say go for it, Bubbles.”</p><p>Robin looks around the group for a consensus. Hearing no objections, she shrugs. </p><p>“He’ll show up before you guys hit anything serious.” Robin smiles, wolfishly. “Probably.” </p><p>She starts laying out the scene: their characters are held in cells, separately, and they organize a jail-break that forges them into a loose alliance. Chrom is startled to realize that while Lissa and Gaius are acting like their characters are guilty of the crimes they were imprisoned for, Miriel and Sumia are proclaiming their own characters’ innocence. He hadn’t expected that he would get to choose, but he thinks it over and surprises himself with a strong conviction that Krumb must have been framed. </p><p>By the time a blond man who must be Vaike shows up, the group has already weathered combat with the city guard, which included an <i>intense</i> debate between Robin and Miriel regarding spell slots, and an in-game argument between Krumb and Gaius’s rude bard Ergan over what to do next.</p><p>“Who needs healing?” Sumia asks, her cleric Petal treating injuries after their fight, while Vaike lumbers in.</p><p>“I can’t believe you guys started without me,” he grouses, slumping into a seat at the table. He’s met with a general chorus of <i>Shut up</i> and <i>Be on time, then</i> which prompts him to slouch even lower. He perks up when he sees Chrom. </p><p>“You must be Lissa’s famous brother,” he says, sticking out his hand for a handshake. It feels like a strange gesture from a guy in gym shorts, until Chrom takes his hand and realizes that it’s more of a strength measuring contest than an actual handshake. Vaike grins as he tries his best to squeeze Chrom’s hand into mush, and, never one to back down, Chrom returns the gesture. They eventually let go, eyeing each other with a new respect.</p><p>“Oh my god, we get it, you have testosterone,” Lissa says. She rolls her eyes and rips open a bag of her snacks, pulling it sharply away from Chrom’s reaching hand.</p><p>“Anyway...let’s get back on track, shall we?” Robin says. She wrangles them into a semblance of order again, although once she introduces Vaike’s barbarian, he wants to have an arm wrestling contest with Krumb. Vaike’s about to insist on best two out of three when they are promptly surrounded by zombies, Robin’s deft hand forcing them to move along.</p><p>Somewhere in-between following a trail of clues leading them to a corrupt politician who framed half the group and the subsequent showdown with the politician—who turns out to be a powerful warlock—and a bunch of ghouls and zombies, Chrom realizes he’s having a lot of fun. It’s chaotic and confusing and he’s not sure what he’s doing most of the time. Everyone is shouting and laughing and scrambling to help each other’s characters. </p><p>At one point, Gaius spouts a limerick that refers to him Krumb the Dumb, and Chrom doesn’t even mind because it lets him roll an extra die. Besides, it was impressive for something made up on the spot. Then, Vaike doesn’t have enough movement to get close and attack like he wanted. He moons the warlock instead, which makes Miriel shoot her drink out her nose. Everyone laughs so much at that, they’re left clutching their sides in pain.</p><p>When Lissa gets the finishing blow, Chrom feels genuinely proud of their accomplishment. Robin lets Lissa describe her kill.</p><p>“...and then I kick the body. And stab it again!” Lissa cries, swinging her arms wildly and nearly smacking Vaike in the face.</p><p>Their ragtag group is left on a high note, walking into the sunset with the promise of future adventuring on the horizon. Everyone turns to each other, chattering excitedly about the best parts. The end of the session feels like coming up from water. He’s tired, but so energized at the same time. He wants to talk someone’s ear off about Krumb, and Petal’s sweetness, and how cool under fire Miriel’s wizard Ibine was.</p><p>Chrom turns to look at Robin, and she glows with a quiet pride. She catches his eye, and beams. </p><p>“Did you have a good time?” she asks, and Chrom chuckles.</p><p>“You know, I did,” he says, and he can’t stop grinning like a fool. “I didn’t expect...but, thanks—thanks for doing all this. Thanks for inviting me.” </p><p>Robin’s smile grows, then she looks down at her hands, like she doesn’t know what to do with them. Chrom is nervous all of a sudden. He swallows hard.</p><p>“Would you want to, uh, do this again sometime soon? Or, something like it? I’d like to see you all again,” he says, and he hopes it comes through that he means he’d especially like to see Robin in particular. </p><p>“This group only gets together when enough of us have free time. So, almost never,” she says, wryly. “But we can hang out anyway! If—if you want.”</p><p>Chrom hastily assures her that he’s interested, and hands over his phone with sweaty palms. There’s a bit of fumbling when they realize he forgot to unlock it for her, and the brush of her hand against his makes his heartbeat thump in his ears. </p><p>Robin punches her name and number into his phone, adding a little bird emoji next to it, and sends herself a text to save his number too. </p><p>“Hey, Robin, quit making googly eyes at the new guy and tell us what loot we got!” Vaike shouts. </p><p>“Wha—I—hey!” Robin flusters, her face flushing as she squawks protests and rushes over to punch Vaike’s arm, shooting a mortified look at Chrom. Lissa’s gaze swings to Chrom as well, gagging when she sees his own reddened face. </p><p>Chrom spends the whole drive home thinking about how Robin leaned into his side a few times to point out things on his character sheet, and the fiendish light in her eyes as she watched them struggle with the trail of clues she’d constructed. He thinks about seeing her again, hopefully soon. He can’t wait.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I had a lot of fun thinking about Robin being a DM and what classes everyone would play! Disclaimer that all of my DND knowledge comes from watching Critical Role, so there's certainly inaccuracies here both about the game's mechanics and the atmosphere of actual regular games, but I hope enough felt true-to-life to be enjoyable.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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